Monday, June 11, 2012

Donate and Support Elissa Kim

TFA alum Elissa Kim is running for school board in Nashville. I just donated $250 and encourage you to support her as well:

Since graduating from Northwestern in '96, I've dedicated 16 years to the ed reform effort, first as a classroom teacher in the largest public high school in New Orleans, and then as the head of Teach For America's recruitment and admissions effort, where I've worked with a terrific team to grow the scale of our corps from less than 1000 incoming corps members per year to likely 5500-5800 corps members placed this fall.

In thinking about how to increase impact, I've decided to run for school board here in my hometown of Nashville, TN. This is a crucial, tough race in district 5 against the incumbent board chair, and it's clear that this election (with three open seats in other districts) will shape the reform effort in our city. We just launched our campaign and need a strong start – it's a four-way race and the election is August 2 with no run-off. All is won or lost in a few short months.

I'm reaching out to ask if you and others on your email list will help me by making a contribution to my campaign. The giving page on my website goes live (latest) on Monday, April 16, and we've set a goal to raise 100K to ensure we strike fast and run a terrific campaign across the board. 13 years of running recruitment campaigns, an incredible team of supporters, and a real passion for making our city a great place to educate our kids makes me think we can do this despite the odds against us, but we need to fire on all cylinders to win.